
NEW (pseudo-) random number generator in 5.18?
I hope mathematically-knowlegable programmers give that a VERY careful review, as it underpins cryptographic programs. Just sayin' ...
Linus Torvalds has released version 5.17 of the Linux kernel. "So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I'm happy to report that it was very calm indeed," Torvalds wrote in his weekly state of the kernel post. "We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last- …
>>Version 5.18 of the kernel is tipped to feature the debut of Intel's plans for "software-defined silicon" – a tech about which Intel has remained virtually silent, other than hints on mailing lists about features that would allow payments to enable different features in processors.
How do you feature something we know nothing about, well your guess is as good as mine?
I'm confused about the workings of the business model.
I start by assuming all the dies coming off a wafer are identical and the method of enabling is universal (if not how are these things made?) So if I buy microcode it must surely work on all the same devices. How do Intel prevent unauthorized distribution, intentional or otherwise?
If there is a method of prevention it must be something like TPM on a stick.
I don't think this can be anything to do with GPL versions as the source code is readable in both. This has got to be about binary blobs.
Yes something like TPM on a stick is it but remember, even if it turns out that someone hacks it and can turn on the paid-for feature for diddly squat, it won't hurt Intell too badly because they hope to milk the large customers who can't afford to be seen to deploy H4xXoR tricks.
Business model Revenue Stream xAAS BS bingo aside: I hate that sort of thing it seems spiteful to actually give some hardware to a customer and say: don't use it it's not allowed, it's MINE!!!!.
It's a bit like Adam and Eve and that apple thing: god's mindset seems inexcusable, it's just a trap. Putting any trust in an entity like that is obviously misguided.
It's complicated, but it's really not unethical (at least in my view). It becomes sensible when the cost is predominantly in the development, not the manufacturing. Say there are two features A and B. There are X people who will pay x for both features, and an additional Y people who will pay y (y < x) for just feature A, but who won't pay x. It is quite often the case that Xx > (X+Y)y. If you _don't_ give the Y people feature B, but disable it somehow, you end up with just charging the higher price for the full featured option and the Y people get nothing.
Of course, it is _always_ the case the Xx + Yy >= (X+Y)y, (and equality only if X=0) so this is also a way for greedy manufacturers to extract every last penny - but people _do_ get the benefit of what they pay for.
Analysis Supermicro launched a wave of edge appliances using Intel's newly refreshed Xeon-D processors last week. The launch itself was nothing to write home about, but a thought occurred: with all the hype surrounding the outer reaches of computing that we call the edge, you'd think there would be more competition from chipmakers in this arena.
So where are all the AMD and Arm-based edge appliances?
A glance through the catalogs of the major OEMs – Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Inspur, Supermicro – returned plenty of results for AMD servers, but few, if any, validated for edge deployments. In fact, Supermicro was the only one of the five vendors that even offered an AMD-based edge appliance – which used an ageing Epyc processor. Hardly a great showing from AMD. Meanwhile, just one appliance from Inspur used an Arm-based chip from Nvidia.
At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, Linus Torvalds said he expects support for Rust code in the Linux kernel to be merged soon, possibly with the next release, 5.20.
At least since last December, when a patch added support for Rust as a second language for kernel code, the Linux community has been anticipating this transition, in the hope it leads to greater stability and security.
In a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, chief open source officer at Cardano, Torvalds said the patches to integrate Rust have not yet been merged because there's far more caution among Linux kernel maintainers than there was 30 years ago.
It seems promoters of RISC-V weren't bluffing when they hinted a laptop using the open-source instruction set architecture would arrive this year.
Pre-orders opened Friday for Roma, the "industry's first native RISC-V development laptop," which is being built in Shenzen, China, by two companies called DeepComputing and Xcalibyte. And by pre-order, they really mean: register your interest.
No pricing is available right now, quantities are said to be limited, and information is sparse.
A drought of AMD's latest Threadripper workstation processors is finally coming to an end for PC makers who faced shortages earlier this year all while Hong Kong giant Lenovo enjoyed an exclusive supply of the chips.
AMD announced on Monday it will expand availability of its Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 CPUs to "leading" system integrators in July and to DIY builders through retailers later this year. This announcement came nearly two weeks after Dell announced it would release a workstation with Threadripper Pro 5000 in the summer.
The coming wave of Threadripper Pro 5000 workstations will mark an end to the exclusivity window Lenovo had with the high-performance chips since they launched in April.
AMD's processors have come out on top in terms of cloud CPU performance across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, according to a recently published study.
The multi-core x86-64 microprocessors Milan and Rome and beat Intel Cascade Lake and Ice Lake instances in tests of performance in the three most popular cloud providers, research from database company CockroachDB found.
Using the CoreMark version 1.0 benchmark – which can be limited to run on a single vCPU or execute workloads on multiple vCPUs – the researchers showed AMD's Milan processors outperformed those of Intel in many cases, and at worst statistically tied with Intel's latest-gen Ice Lake processors across both the OLTP and CPU benchmarks.
In yet another sign of how fortunes have changed in the semiconductor industry, Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC is expected to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Wall Street analysts estimate TSMC will grow second-quarter revenue 43 percent quarter-over-quarter to $18.1 billion. Intel, on the other hand, is expected to see sales decline 2 percent sequentially to $17.98 billion in the same period, according to estimates collected by Yahoo Finance.
The potential for TSMC to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue is indicative of how demand has grown for contract chip manufacturing, fueled by companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and Apple who design their own chips and outsource manufacturing to foundries like TSMC.
If claims hold true, AMD has been targeted by the extortion group RansomHouse, which says it is sitting on a trove of data stolen from the processor designer following an alleged security breach earlier this year.
RansomHouse says it obtained the files from an intrusion into AMD's network on January 5, 2022, and that this isn't material from a previous leak of its intellectual property.
This relatively new crew also says it doesn't breach the security of systems itself, nor develop or use ransomware. Instead, it acts as a "mediator" between attackers and victims to ensure payment is made for purloined data.
Embedded World RISC-V International has grown its pile of royalty-free, open specifications, with additional documents covering firmware, hypervisors, and more.
RISC-V – pronounced "risk five", and not to be confused with the other architecture of that name, RISC-5 – essentially sets out how a CPU core should work from a software point of view. Chip designers can implement these instruction set specifications in silicon, and there are a good number of big industry players backing it.
The latest specs lay out four features that compatible processors should adhere to. Two of them, E-Trace and Zmmul, will be useful for organizations building RISC-V hardware and software, and the other two could prove important in future, aiding the development of OSes to run on RISC-V computers.
Intel has found a new way to voice its displeasure over Congress' inability to pass $52 billion in subsidies to expand US semiconductor manufacturing: withholding a planned groundbreaking ceremony for its $20 billion fab mega-site in Ohio that stands to benefit from the federal funding.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Intel was tentatively scheduled to hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ohio manufacturing site with state and federal bigwigs on July 22. But, in an email seen by the newspaper, the x86 giant told officials Wednesday it was indefinitely delaying the festivities "due in part to uncertainty around" the stalled Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act.
That proposed law authorizes the aforementioned subsidies for Intel and others, and so its delay is holding back funding for the chipmakers.
Comment Intel has begun shipping its cryptocurrency-mining "Blockscale" ASIC slightly ahead of schedule, and the timing could not be more unfortunate as digital currency values continue to plummet.
Raja Koduri, the head of Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics group, tweeted Wednesday the company has started initial shipments of the Blockscale ASIC to crypto-mining firms Argo Blockchain, Hive Blockchain and Griid:
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